Major Additions - Joomla for vBulletin (IMPORTANT UPDATE) - Bridge to the World's Most Popular CMS

Warning!!! An potential exploit has been found in this modification. The server that hosts vjoomla.com has been attacked several times. It is known to already be severely comprimised so at this time it is unclear whether the vulnerability lies in vJoomla, Joomla itself or the server. Until this is resolved to my satisfaction I am removing this modification. My apologies.


The modification WILL be re-released once this issue is resolved!

vJoomla is an offshoot of Joomla 1.0 that is designed to run in tandem with vbulletin. Unlike the main release it will not run without vbulletin - if you desire a CMS without a forum then use Joomla! instead. vJoomla is identical in most all regards to Joomla!

What vJoomla Does

• Provide a single session, single login interface to Joomla and vbulletin.
• Allows Joomla pages to be skinned by vbulletin's template engine.
• Maps Joomla usergroups to vbulletin usergroups.

What vJoomla Does Not Do

• It does not rewrite your templates for you - so you will need to go in currently and change relative links to images and pages to absolute links. This is most important in the style sheets and in the navbar template. This is something you need to do yourself rather than programmatically since no two sites are likely to be using the same style sheet and the same setup for these links.

Install Instructions

1. Log into your admincp
2. Close your forum
3. If your forums are at the root of your site move them elsewhere - the best location is probably /forum
4. Upload the files from the zip packages to their respective locations. There should be no overwrites.
5. Navigate to the root of your site and run the Joomla installer.
6. Go back to the admincp and install the Joomla product file
7. Now either copy the ./cpstyles, ./clientscript and ./images directory of the forum into the Joomla directory OR create symbolic links to those directories. The contents of the ./images directory of Joomla and vbulletin will need to be merged.

This is release candidate 2.

[Luky]

Its very nice for you to release a free bridge, its about time someone ran them people asking for money out of buisness! But may i ask, why not use on a live board? I mean if all you did was change the sql query's and abit of code, not much security issues can arise can it?

[TheAllusionist]

Darn, I use Mambo! LOL This has been on a lot of peoples wish list for some time, thank you for taking it on.

[Michael Morris]

Originally Posted by juanchi

This mod is great, the only thing that I don't like is the way it handles the templates, and please don't get me wrong but I will prefer to use some of the templates available for joomla to skin the CMS. Michael if there could be a possibility to implement this please give it a chance, thanks.

I don't have the time to develop two different bridges. I'm undergoing this massive bit of hacking how Joomla displays content because a constant bugbear I've had at work is my clients, several design firms, hate tables as markup with a purple passion. Joomla uses tables extensively in content.html.php and frontend.html.php. Rather than continuing bickering with them I'm branching off Joomla to allow templates to drive the content pages -- the vbulletin template engine in the case of vJoomla and the patTemplate engine in the case of my contract work (The only difference between these two is the line that calls the template). If you want to integrate Joomla and retain the ability to use Joomla templates then I strongly recommend you look into bbpixel's bridge which has that functionality. $20 is not a lot to ask for a piece of software these days.

Originally Posted by Luky

Its very nice for you to release a free bridge, its about time someone ran them people asking for money out of buisness!

That isn't my intent. By the time it is completed this bridge will be quite different from bbpixel in several notable ways. The reason I am working on it is I need a unified template engine - something that bbpixel's bridge doesn't offer.

But may i ask, why not use on a live board? I mean if all you did was change the sql query's and abit of code, not much security issues can arise can it?

I have a live board that will be going up with this in two weeks if all goes well. There will be a vast difference between this early beta and the finished product between now and then.

[ams3521]

Hi and thanks for a great mod, would this work with the Joomla component community builder?

[pete_brady]

Will this bridge enable joomla / vb search integration?

[Michael Morris]

Originally Posted by ams3521

Hi and thanks for a great mod, would this work with the Joomla component community builder?

Almost certainly not. Community Builder builds on the Joomla user table, and vJoomla disables that table in favor of using the vbulletin one.

Originally Posted by pete_brady

Will this bridge enable joomla / vb search integration?

Not initially.

[pete_brady]

Originally Posted by Michael Morris

Not initially.

Sounds promising!

[ERuiz]

Originally Posted by Michael Morris

For the record I purchased bbpixel and was vastly disappointed in their customer service and how they implemented the bridge, so I wrote my own.

I concur 100%. Their support is almost null after you make the purchase. Too bad my current website is so heavily hacked and using the BBpixel solution, because if not, I would be willing to help you out with beta testing on my site.

I will keep an eye on this thread though. It looks extremely promising and probably in the future, I would make the move from BBPixel to this hack. Keep up the excellent work! :up:

[Billspaintball]

Im keeping a real close eye on this one.
Ive looked at Joomla several times in the past but couldant find any acceptable way to intergrate it into a vB based site.

Very Interested.

[aloha]

I love it when there are hacks that I will actually use.

Many thanks to all coders, and all those who continously make these scripts on a day to day basis just to help us unify for something better.

Downloading and going to test it out tomorrow.

PATIENTLY WAITING FOR V1... did I shout that?

oopsies...